


The Night to Gather You Home

by vividwings



Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, in which I try to fix the primarchs by giving them moms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vividwings/pseuds/vividwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of raising himself, little Konrad Curze runs into a young woman on the streets of Nostramo, and things are just a bit happier. Shameless fix-it fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to a line from purplekitteh's work "Only This and Nothing More", which is very good and you should read it here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/905503

She gripped her keys tightly in her hand as she heard the trashcan rattle. It was late, nearly three in the morning, and the streetlight near her apartment building was always flickering and nearly burnt out. She was about to just make a break for the door when she saw a small, pale face look up from the can. She relaxed- it was just a boy. He was about the size of a six year old, though his face looked… looked like a starving toddler. Malnutrition and stunted growth, most likely. Who knew how old he really was. He looked ready to bolt.

“Please, don’t be afraid.” She said softly. “No one in the building is using anything in there. But you look like you need more than scraps.” She set her bags down slowly and rooted around in them, pulling out the small meat pie she had gotten for herself as a treat. The night had been a difficult one. Her bruises showed as much. She set it down on the decorative wall and backed away.

He approached cautiously, like a dog that had been struck too many times, and snatched the pie before she could blink. He seemed to appear again several feet away, his hands shoving the still-warm pie into his mouth as fast as he could. She smiled, to let him know it was all right, and then headed inside.

\--

The boy was there again the next night, but she had no meat pie this time, only some crackers. Her stomach growled. Still, she left half her share on the wall again. He came closer this time, but would not take them if she was too near. He ate them quickly, but was brave enough to continue to scavenge through the trashcan afterwards.

\--

Two weeks of feeding him whenever she had food, and he was willing to take it from her hand instead of from some neutral location. His hands would brush against her, cold against her skin. The next night, she left him one of her grandfather’s old coats. It had been his favorite, a dark wool one that still smelled of him, but the little boy needed it more.

Not so little, perhaps. He seemed taller, even though less than a month had passed.

\--

“So this is where you live.” The voice came from the shadows.

“You startled me.” She replied, her heart pounding in her throat.

“I’m glad I found you.” He stepped into the glow of the streetlamp. He was fleshy around the middle, as most wealthy men were, but broad through the shoulders and hands. Those hands had left plenty of bruises.

“I’m done working for the night, sir. I have space free tomorrow night, if you want-“ His hand at her throat cut off her words.

“I think you have time free tonight.”

“P-please!” She gasped out, tugging at his fingers. Malnourished as she was, she could not match his strength as he pushed her against the wall.

He was gone a moment later. The scrawny boy from the shadows was on him, ripping at his flesh with a shiv made of twisted metal. In moments, the client was choking on his own blood and gasping out his last gurgling breaths on the sidewalk. The boy was breathing heavily and shaking, like the exertion cost him more strength than he had in his body.

“T-Thank you.” She gasped out, rubbing her neck and staring at the slowly growing pool of blood. “We should get out of here, in case someone comes looking for him. Come home with me, you can use my shower and I’ll make you dinner?”

He nodded cautiously.

  
He was skittish, even as he followed her up the stairs. He was utterly silent, and she had to keep him in her sight or she would lose track of him. He needed a little encouragement in order to follow her into the apartment.

  
It was a tiny place, with a bedroom and a large closet that served as a second bedroom. She had slept there, when her grandfather had been alive. She was too afraid of what a stranger might do if they were living in her home to rent it out. She was holding out hope that one of her friends would be interested, but she had few friends, and none of them knew what she did at night. She had no wish to enlighten them.

  
The boy, though, looked at it like it was a palace. He wouldn’t touch anything, which she was somewhat grateful for- she tried to keep the place clean, and he was covered in blood and mud and worse things besides. A bath, that is what he needed, more than just a quick cold shower. She added up in her head, and determined that she could afford to draw a warm bath, if she took cold showers for the next week. Honestly, warm showers didn’t help her warm up much. The only places she was warm were the shop she worked in, selling jewelry and gloves that cost more than six month’s rent for her, and when a client had her over in their home.

  
“Let’s get you a bath first, all right? Get all that blood off of you.” She gestured towards a door in the back of the tiny living room and kitchen. “Do you know how to use one?”

  
Mutely, he shook his head.

  
“I’ll help you.”

  
After a pause, he nodded, and she led him to the bathroom. The room was small and dingy, lit by one flickering lumen globe. There were some stains that never came out, no matter how she scrubbed, so the grout was dark brown in splashes, between the white tiles. She knew they were bloodstains, but it took more money than she had to get an apartment without bloodstains. At least she didn’t worry about his bath making it dirtier. She turned the faucet, and waved him over. “Put your hand under the water, and tell me if you want it warmer or colder.”

  
He didn’t nod, but he stepped up, skirting around her as best he could. He jumped when he first touched the water.

  
“Good.” He said, in a husky voice. “Warm.”

  
“Yes, it will warm you to your bones. Take off your clothes, and hop in. I’ve got some old men’s clothes, maybe we can make something fit you. I wouldn’t let a cat have kittens on those rags.”

  
He didn’t seem to understand her, other than to remove his clothes. He was as oddly proportioned as he appeared from the outside, the size of a six year old but with some features of a much younger boy. His muscles were overly developed for his age and his weight. The absence of fat meant that every muscle stood out starkly against his skin, along with his bones. His hair looked like it had never been cut and hung in matted dreadlocks around his face. He looked at the water, then at her, then back at the water.  
“You can get in. There’s a towel on the rack, it will get the water off you afterwards.

  
Still he stood there. She approached him slowly, and put her hands under his armpits. He jumped in surprise at the touch, but couldn’t struggle before she had deposited him in the steaming water. “You have to enjoy it while it’s warm. It’ll cool down quickly enough.”  
“Warm.” He said again. “Blood.” He splashed at it, his head tilted quizzically to the side.

  
A shiver went down her spine as she realized the only warm liquid he had ever known was blood. She picked up a washcloth.

  
“Water. Better than blood. I’m going to help you get the blood off. This means I’m going to be touching you. Tell me or move away if you want me to stop.” She tried to say it slowly, but she wasn’t sure how much he understood. He did hold still, though, long enough for her to start wiping away the ingrained mud, waste, and blood. As he relaxed, he started to press back against her touch, like a cat realizing it likes being petted. She obliged him with a little more pressure as she worked out the worst spots.

  
“May I cut your hair?” She asked as she attempted to untangle it. “It’s matted with… it might make you sick.”

  
He shook his head.

  
“May I at least comb it? So it lies straight like mine?” She shook her head to show how her hair fell. She took good care of her appearance, though she had little money. It was an investment in her work to be as pretty as she could be. “It will stay out of your face better then. I can even braid it for you.”

  
After some thought, he nodded. She finished washing him, including several thorough rinses of his hair with water and a little shampoo. It didn’t do much for the mats, but it got the worst of the filth out of it.

  
She helped him towel off after he tried, and failed, to figure out how it worked. She moved slowly to avoid startling him, and then bid him remain while she fetched some clothes. She had sold most of her Grandfather’s belongings, but she still had a few of his older garments, things not worth the time to sell yet. A dark blue flannel shirt, worn at the elbows and collar, a pair of sturdy denim trousers from his days as a carpenter, and undergarments. It would all be falling off the poor boy, but with a belt and some rolling, it might work.

  
She returned to find him still wrapped in the towel, shivering. He let her dress him with surprising ease. Perhaps, she thought, he had realized she was not going to hurt him.  
Or he was secure in the knowledge her could kill her. The shiv was still close, sitting on the edge of the sink, and she knew how fast he could move.

  
Either way, he was soon dressed and looking deeply uncomfortable with it. “You’ve been very patient. Dinner will be soon. Come to the kitchen, it’ll be a little warmer while I’m cooking.” He followed several paces behind, like a small pale shadow, and watched as she put a pan of water on the stove. “This is dehydrated soup mix. It’ll keep you warm as it gets colder. You look like you’ve already seen a few winters, though, so you know how it is.”

  
“No.” He said softly.

  
“No? Haven’t been on the streets that long?”

  
“No.”

  
The poor thing probably only lost his parents in the spring, then. Still, it can’t have been a happy home- he barely spoke, and did not seem familiar with baths and stoves and other household items.

  
“What’s your name?” She asked.

  
“No name.” He shook his head. “Don’t have one.”

  
The longest sentence yet. She sought to coax him out some more as she stirred the yellow powder into the water. “My name is Evelyn.”

  
He did not stay the night, that first time. He waited until his hair to dry after she warned him against hypothermia, and then slipped out in new clothes with his now-combed hair in a neat braid. It was short, barely reaching the tops of his shoulders, but he looked less like a feral puppy and more like a person. She went to bed, several hours later than she was expecting to, but with no regrets. The boy looked human now, his little stomach rounded from a full meal like a satisfied kitten.  
\--

It was another two nights before she found him lurking outside the trashcans again after she came back from work. She smiled, and gestured for him to join her. He darted out over the open sidewalk and hid in her shadow until she was up the stairs and safely inside. His clothes, she realized, were stained and dirty, and his hair had come mostly undone. She could hear his stomach grumbling.

  
“How have you been?”

  
He shrugged. “Ok.”

  
“I’ve been well.” She said. He might as well learn conversational niceties from her. “Work is going well. There were a couple large tips last night, so there are some vegetables to put in the soup.”

  
“Veg-ee-tables?” He over-pronounced the word.

  
“Onions and carrots and the like. Vegetables are things that aren’t meat, and aren’t grain. Vegetables make a soup better, even dehydrated chicken stock. You can also put in eggs, some kinds of grains, and any kind of meat to improve it.”

  
“Rat?” He asked.

  
“Stewing is the best way to cook rat.” She explained. “It softens it up and makes it easier to eat. You can boil the bones in it, too, to get the little bits of marrow out. You can chop up the tiny little organs, too, and they don’t taste bad when they’re mixed in with everything else.”  
“Want rat?” He said, sounding shy.

  
“If you bring me rats, I’ll stew them for you properly.” She pulled out the carrots, which were a bit old, and cut off the parts that were black before chopping them into the slowly heating pot of chicken stock.

  
“Dog?” His stomach grumbled again as he started to smell the soup.

  
“Don’t try to catch dogs, they’re dangerous. I wouldn’t want you getting bit.” She started on the onions. “Rats are safer, if you can catch them. Pigeons are good, too, and go very well with chicken.”

  
“Fast.”

  
“I know you’re fast, but they’re still big and can have diseases. If you must try, don’t go after the ones with foam at the mouth, they’ll make you sick and if they bite you, you could easily die.” The onions were making her cry, and she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

  
“Won’t.”

  
“The disease that makes them foam is virulent- it’s very strong. It will make you very sick and it kills almost everyone who gets it.”

  
“Don’t cry.” He said, even more quietly. “Can’t die.”

  
“Everyone dies, dear, eventually. It’s part of being human.” She smiled through her tears. “It’s just the onions. The juice irritates my eyes and makes me tear up.”

  
“Oh.”

  
She reached out very slowly and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing anyone can do to change it, or know when they’ll pass on.”

  
He didn’t say anything, just stood on his tiptoes to look in the pot. “Done?”

  
“Not yet. Soon, dear. It has to simmer for a while.”

  
“Simmer?”

  
“Boil. When the bubbles start coming up- no!” She grabbed his hand before he touched the water. “Dear, you scared me! It’s very hot, and it will burn you if you touch it.”  
He yanked his hand away with strength that surprised her. She knew clients who were weaker than this tiny little boy.

  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, but I didn’t want you to get hurt. Burns can get easily infected and cause scarring and pain.” She said in a soft, soothing voice. He slowly approached the stove again, and this time held his hand a few inches away from the pot, to feel the heat.

  
“Nice.”

  
“From a distance, yes. But you can’t get too close, or it will burn you. It’s like light- just enough to see by is very important, but if you look directly at something too bright, it hurts and you can’t see. Burns can make it so you can’t feel.” She kept a watch on him, to check if he was getting too close, and added a valuable pinch of her small collection of spices. Most of them were old, years old, from before her grandfather died, but they were still good. She felt like he would appreciate it, and who else did she have to cook for, anyway?

  
“Oh.”

  
“It’s boiling now, so let’s leave it to simmer for a little while.” She ran a bit of lukewarm water into a bowl, and picked up a kitchen rag. “Come here, and I’ll help you wash. When you can’t afford enough hot water for a bath, a rag bath will keep you from getting too dirty.” She sat down at the kitchen table and patted the chair in front of her. He perched on the edge, ready to flee at any moment. She gently soaked the rag and wiped off his hands to start with. His nails were encrusted with dirt and blood after only a few days. She scrubbed them clean, until his skin was glowing white again. She moved up his arms, where the shirt had caught the worst of it. His face she treated as gently as she could, wiping away the grime.

  
“Turn around, and I’ll rebraid your hair.” He turned halfway, so she could get to his hair, but not so he couldn’t watch her at the same time. The poor boy was always afraid of everything. She braided it again tightly, working out the worst of the tangles with her fingers.

  
He jumped when the timer rang.

  
“That is the sound of dinner.” She rose and filled a couple bowls with the soup. She handed him a spoon, but he was already lifting the bowl to his mouth. She smiled, but couldn’t blame him. There were days she was that hungry.

  
“Blow on it to cool it down before you drink it, it will be more comfortable that way.” He ignored her and kept taking tiny sips, the most he could bear. She was halfway done with hers when he finished. He looked less tense, but he obviously could have eaten more. They both could have.

  
“There’s more in the pot.” She said. “Serve yourself some. I’m full.” She lied. It was the lie her mother had told, and the lie her grandfather told. The lie of parents and older siblings everywhere.

  
He stared at her, like he knew she was lying, but took the rest of the soup anyway. That night, he stayed for a while longer as she listened to the radio. He only ever said very short words, but she spoke to him anyway, explaining the words the radio announcer used, the context of the stories. He listened, until it was time for her to sleep. She invited him to stay, but he just shook his head and disappeared out the window.

  
“Knock three times on the window if you want to come back in.” She said as he left.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Konrad sleeps inside for the first time, and Evelyn wonders if stealing food is really a crime.

He was back the next evening, this time bearing three fat rats. He looked very proud as he poked his head out of the trashcan. “Rats?”

“Oh, thank you!” She said with a weary smile. The night had been a hard one, and she had bruises like hands on her arms again. “Come inside, I’ll stew them up proper like.” He followed her closely, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “This will make an excellent meal.”

“Wanted to help.” He said as they walked up the stairs.

“You’re a good boy.” She said. “Thinking of me like this. Come on in, I’ll clean and skin them, too.”

He sat in the kitchen chair, his legs swinging back and forth, as she worked. She drained their blood into a bowl (mix with soup, adds a few extra calories and some much-needed salt), gutted them. She put some water on, getting it ready for the rats. She had no vegetables today, but a spoonful of dehydrated onions and chicken stock would have to do for flavoring and filling out the soup.

He watched intently as she skinned and stripped the rats down to the bone. She let nothing go to waste- she gathered the long bones and crushed them, then tossed them in the soup. The marrow would seep out into the mix, and the calcium would help the poor growing boy. The blood went in last, in small amounts and stirred in thoroughly.

“Teach?” He asked.

“Of course. Next time you bring me a rat, I’ll show you how to gut it. If you bring me a couple, I can show you how to roast one, too, but it’s more wasteful. Stewing gets all the good parts into your belly, where it belongs.” She explained as she stirred the stew. The apartment started to smell more like cooking meat than mold and old sweat.

“Mmm.” He said, staring at the slowly rising steam. “Cold.”

“What? Oh, you mean outside. Yes. Winter is coming, as our part of the world goes further away from the sun. It will get much colder than this before it starts getting warm again.”

“Oh. Freeze?”

“Yes, the water will freeze. If you get cold, you can sleep here. It’s not much warmer, but it’s out of the wind and weather. I’ve got an old cloak you can borrow, too, from when I was a little girl, so it will probably fit you.” She had kept it initially because she thought she might have children of her own, but that was increasingly unlikely unless a client had a mind to make her permanent. She wasn’t sure if she would take that, if it were offered. Freedom was important, and being tied to one man put her completely at his mercy. Better have resilience by having a group of clients.

“Like that.” He said, still staring at the pot.

“I thought you might.” She said. “This will take a while to finish. I’ve got some crackers if you want to eat something to hold you over until then. They’re stale, I’m afraid, leftovers from work.” The shop she worked in served fine refreshments to customers as they browsed jewelry that was more than the down payment on most townhouses. Sparkling wine and elegant crackers and spreads, for the most part. Any wine that went flat the management generally took home, or drank in their office, but the stale crackers were divvied up among the salesgirls. She fished them out of the cabinet and handed them over. They were gone in moments.

“That feels better, doesn’t it?” She smiled. “So you don’t have a name?”

He shook his head.

“What do people call you?”

“Rat. You. Boy.” He shrugged.

“Do you know who your parents are?”

He shook his head. “One of them was tall.”

“Everyone should have a name. You can pick one for yourself, if you want.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“A boy should have a name. It means a lot, a name. I’ll see if any come to me.”

“Ok.” He shrugged again.

\--

The first time he stayed the night was during the first true cold snap, when the puddles froze in the streets and blood froze on knives held in shivering hands. She found him in her apartment, apparently having entered using the locked window. It was no longer locked, but it was not broken. She didn’t ask. He jumped when she entered the main room, an action she mimicked a second later.

“You gave me a fright, dear.”

“Sorry.” He said under his breath. “Cold.”

“I always like it when you visit, it’s just a surprise to find someone at home. How are you?”

He shrugged.

“There’s a pallet in the closet I used to sleep on. But…”

He looked up.

“If you would do me a favor, if it’s all right with you, I get very cold at night. Having someone, even a very small person, to share my blankets with would keep me much warmer. But only if you’re all right with it, I know you don’t like being held down or touching people.” She wasn’t totally lying, it would be good to have someone else next to her, keeping her warm. But she was more worried about him, shivering alone on a pallet.

He thought for a long moment.

“Okay.” He said.

“I appreciate it, I really do.”

That night, they curled up under the covers. She took the space against the wall, so he wouldn’t feel trapped, and he slept facing the rest of the room, his little shiv under his pillow. It took him a long time to fall asleep, but when he did, he looked more like a child than he ever had. His face was relaxed and the tension in his back was gone. He looked like a little dark-haired cherub.

In the morning, when she woke, she stirred ever so slightly, to ease him awake. He jumped, but not too much. His eyes didn’t have the dark circles around them anymore, and he looked healthier. Rat stew and a warm bed seemed to suit him well.

“Hopefully sharing the covers didn’t keep you from sleeping?” She asked.  
He shook his head.

“Warm.”

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He burrowed under the covers.

“I’ve got to go to work, but you can stay here as long as you like, as long as you lock up behind you.” She crawled out of bed, making sure not to disturb his little pocket of warmth. He pulled the covers over his head.

“Ok.”

He was still there when she got home. Well, he had to have left briefly, because there were two dead rats sitting on the counter and a loaf of bread. She swallowed. He had to have stolen that, as payment for the place to stay. She wondered how she could tell him he didn’t owe her anything.

\--

He stole more than she liked. She never mentioned it, because she went hungry often enough she would not turn down food, but she felt terrible about it. She insisted he eat the lion’s share of it.

When he came home with a whole ham, she asked him (with a mouth that was watering) where he got these things.

“I take them from bad people.”

“How do you know that they’re bad?”

“This man hurt little kids, so I took his ham.”

“Oh.” She felt a little less bad, and carved it up for him. For once, he actually didn’t eat everything on his plate. Not initially, anyway- but an hour later, he was eyeing it again, so she refilled his plate.


End file.
